


Paved Paradise (and Put in a Parking Lot)

by orphan_account



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Light Angst, M/M, Past Domestic Abuse, crazy ex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-02
Updated: 2014-09-02
Packaged: 2018-02-15 19:29:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2240727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some stares feel like they're looking straight through your eyes and into your soul. This stare feels like it's looking straight through Tim's eyes, grabbing his soul, forcing it through the back of his skull, and pinning it to the wall behind him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paved Paradise (and Put in a Parking Lot)

Tim is half asleep on his feet when the first customers start arriving. He deals with them in a caffeine-fueled haze, and briefly dozes off against the register when there's a lull around 6:45. MadBum, the asshole that he is, doesn't bother to wake him up.

What does wake him is a tentative shoulder poke a few (or fifteen) minutes later. He jolts upright and immediately locks eyes with the most intense stare he's ever seen.

Some stares feel like they're looking straight through your eyes and into your soul. This stare feels like it's looking straight through Tim's eyes, grabbing his soul, forcing it through the back of his skull, and pinning it to the wall behind him.

Yeah. Pretty fucking intense.

"Wake up and smell the coffee, sleepyhead," the customer teases in what sounds like a Texan accent, shallowly buried under time spent in a northern environment. The words are delivered in a chipper manner that is, in Tim's opinion, entirely inappropriate for the current morning hour.

"Careful," he snarks back instinctively, "there's a legal limit for how perky you can be before 8:30, and you're breaking it."

Over at the espresso machine, MadBum snorts. Tim elects to ignore it. 

The customer manages to smile without changing the intensity of his stare. "How d'you know it's before 8:30 after all? Maybe you overslept and are only dreaming this. Maybe I'm just a figment of your imagination and am only being perky inside your head."

Before he has time to think, Tim's mouth opens and he says, "If I'm dreaming you, then you don't have no money, I don't have to serve you, and I can go back to sleep." He immediately slaps a hand over his mouth because _Jesus, Tim, what have we told you about sassing the customers?!_

But the customer only laughs, eyes finally breaking the stare as they crinkle up in a smile. Tim relaxes a bit, because usually when a customer laughs, they don't report him to management. This guy doesn't look like the report-him-to-management type, either, with curly blond hair and wide blue (freaky) eyes. He's wearing a Star Wars Darth Penguin hoodie, unzipped, and a green t-shirt that says "√-1 2⌃3 Σ π... and it was delicious."

It takes Tim a few minutes to get the joke. When he does, his brain immediately christens the guy Nerdboy.

Nerdboy shakes his head and mutters something in some fake language (might be Klingon) when he sees the moniker Tim wrote on the side of his cup, but he walks out smiling. 

The next day's Monday, and Tim has a later shift because of his early morning classes—Western Civ and a course on werecreatures in global myths and legends.Tim's always been into history, partly because some of his own is rather vague—he doesn't remember his mother very well. He's taking the werecreature course because he needs the credit, and it looked fun on the course selection sheet. The werecreature professor is eccentric and has them act out some of the stories.

Tuesday, however, Tim's got the opening timeslot again, this time with Angel. Tim's not as tired as he was Sunday morning, and he even manages to flash "Boy Scout" Buster a vaguely suggestive smile as he hands over a piping espresso. Buster smiles back, and even though there's no trace of suggestiveness in it, Tim's heart still maybe squeezes in his chest. Just a little.

Around 7 again, Nerdboy walks in and orders the same plain coffee as before. He tries to chat a little, random early morning blather. When Tim hands over his cup at the other end of the counter, Nerdboy looks at what he wrote and asks, "If I'm Nerdboy, who are you?"

"Just call him Freak," Angel says in passing. Tim is tempted to go over there and attempt to wrestle his coworker into submission, but the last time he tried that, he ended up pinned to the floor with 200 pounds of hot, muscle-bound college student on top of him. It was after hours, so no one saw, but it still wasn't good for his... his ego. He'll just go with that.

He watches out of the corner of his eye as Nerdboy adds two creams and a sickening amount of sugar, stirring to make the crystalline sweetness dissolve. When Nerdboy glances back as he's leaving, Tim pretends to gag at the nauseating sweetness he now imagines is inhabiting the to-go cup. Nerdboy mock-scowls, and then the door swings shut.

Later, when they're cleaning up, Angel enlists Panda in the task of cornering Tim in the kitchen,

"So what's this I hear about you and some nerd boy?" Panda asks, grinning like a little kid who's just found out where his mom hid the cookies.

Tim wasn't expecting this. He grins uneasily and tries to edge sideways slightly—it's a choice between being pressed up against Angel's hip or the sharp, cold edge of the counter, and considering that the counter would be poking him in the small of the back, he'll take Angel's hip any day of the week.

"Um..." he says as blankly as he can. "What do you mean?"

"Nicknames, Freak, nicknames," Angel says. "You gave him one. You've only seen the guy—what, once, twice? What are you, desperate?"

And, oh, _that's_ what they're getting at. They think he _likes_ Nerdboy, which... seriously, what the fuck? He doesn't even know the guy's real name!Also, Angel and Panda should know better—Tim's horrible, hopeless crush on Buster is hilariously well-documented in their phones.

But no, his coworkers are true shippers at heart. They pester him for all the nonexistent details, and Panda demands to know what Nerdboy looks like. 

Whatever, Tim thinks. He understands. Even he's not immune to the shipper disease (he may have applauded last year when Angel and Gregor finally got it together). Besides, it'll probably be easier for him if he just goes among for now. 

"He's got corky blond hair, cut short. About this tall. Some kind of scruff thing going on. Always wears nerdy t-shirts—"

"Wait, wait," Panda interrupts, "don't tell me. Does he have, like, really crazy eyes that make intense look easy?"

"Uh... yyyyyyyeeah..."

Panda bursts out laughing so hard he folds in two and has to back up to avoid headbutting Tim. When he finally stops laughing enough to force words out, he gasps, "Shit, that's Moose you're talking about!" Seeing Tim's blank look, he says, "Transfer student from University of Texas, outfielder, gonna be on the team."

This time, both Angel and Panda start giggling as they watch Tim's face transform itself into an expression that he hopes is exasperation but is probably more like 'oh shit'. He manages to escape, though, and pushes the topic out of his head until he's made it out of the cafe and is halfway back to the dorm. 

Eventually, he decides that, oh well, he can live with it. He managed to get through last year with a real crush—after that, how hard can a fake one be?


End file.
